Visitors flocked to West London to catch keynotes covering data breaches, darknets, new regulations and more, and exhibitors displaying wares ranging from data breach and insider threat prevention tools to threat intelligence feeds and penetration testing services, among many other areas. Beyond the cybersecurity guidance and briefing, tchotchkes were also dispensed aplenty.

Here are visual highlights from this year's conference.

Attendees Galore

Organizers estimated that more than 19,500 individuals attended this year's conference. Entry was free, provided you registered in advance.

Packed Exhibition Hall

Located on Hammersmith Road in London's West Kensington neighborhood, the Olympia exhibition center was built in 1886 and originally known as the National Agricultural Hall. For this year's Infosecurity Europe, more than 400 exhibitors set up shop in the Olympia for the three-day event.

Full Side Hall

As with last year, the conference has gotten so large that it expanded into a side hall attached to the main Olympia hall.

The state of data breaches, as encapsulated by the #TalkTalk breach: a supposed "Russian Islamic cyber jihadi hacker" (police said) turned out to be a 17-year-old who ultimately caused £77 million pounds of damage.

Unlike last year, when some keynotes were held at an Olympia facility located next door to the main venue, this year's Infosecurity Europe managed to replicate the keynote stage of years past on the upper floor, albeit with better seating and layout.

Interviews Galore

Chester Wisniewski, principal research scientist, Sophos

At this year's Infosecurity Europe, my colleague Nick Holland and I conducted dozens of video interviews with leading information security experts.

See ISMG's Infosecurity Europe Conference highlights to review all of our video interviews, including with Infosecurity Hall of Fame inductees Troy Hunt and Brian Honan, as well as experts from numerous firms, including Akamai, Avast, Contrast Security, Cymulate, Egress, Expanse, Kaspersky, MetaCompliance, Sophos, ZeroFOX and many more.

Cybersecurity: Hot Topics

ISMG's Nick Holland prepares to interview Senseon's David Atkinson

Based on the sessions I attended and conversations we had with information security professionals at Infosecurity Europe, what's hot in 2019?

Start with authentication, identity management and privileged account management, as well as digital transformation and application security, including DevSecOps, among numerous other topics. From a threat standpoint, meanwhile, don't forget phishing attacks, business email compromise and other forms of social engineering, or data breaches, cybercrime and malicious insiders.

Machine Learning Gets More Nuanced

Indeed, many of the security experts and vendors I spoke with at the conference had a clear message for the industry, as for example encapsulated here by John Matthews, CIO of ExtraHop: "Stop calling machine learning AI!"

Security experts have long been optimistic about the impact that ML can have. Retired RSA Chairman Art Coviello told me at last year's RSA conference in San Francisco that ML was fast proving a natural fit for improving endpoint security tools. But its application has continued to grow, as have the nuances underpinning discussions about the approach, which today are much less about ML for ML's sake, and much more about what it's supporting - typically, crunching larger and larger data sets to spot anomalies or unusual behavior so more automated controls can clamp down.

As Tony Pepper, CEO of Egress told me: "Too many businesses talk about machine learning like it's all things to all men, but in reality, machine learning isn't the thing that's really neat and sexy, actually - it's how you're using machine learning to solve real business problems."

British Businesses Exposed

Tod Beardsley, director of research, Rapid7

While at the conference, I also sat down with Tod Beardsley, director of research at Rapid7, which recently scanned the internet to identify the services and servers being exposed by Britain's biggest publicly traded firms (see: Cyberattack Risk: Scans Find Big Businesses Exposed).

"The bright spot ... is that corporate U.K. has done a pretty great job of getting rid of SMB and telnet," Beardsley told me in a podcast interview. That's good news, because it means big British businesses have dramatically reduced their attack surface in the wake of WannaCry.

But these organizations are still getting hacked. "We do see attack traffic emanating from the FTSE 250," he said, referring to the biggest firms that are publicly traded on London Stock Exchange.

Networking Opportunities

With nearly 20,000 attendees, this year's Infosecurity Europe left plenty of opportunities not just for browsing the latest technology and services, keynotes and "tech talks," but also networking.

About the Author

Schwartz is an award-winning journalist with two decades of experience in magazines, newspapers and electronic media. He has covered the information security and privacy sector throughout his career. Before joining Information Security Media Group in 2014, where he now serves as the executive editor, DataBreachToday and for European news coverage, Schwartz was the information security beat reporter for InformationWeek and a frequent contributor to DarkReading, among other publications. He lives in Scotland.

Enter your email address to reset your password

Already have anISMG account?

Forgot Your Password Message:

Contact Us

Already have anISMG account?

Our website uses cookies. Cookies enable us to provide the best experience possible and help us understand how visitors use our website. By browsing databreachtoday.co.uk, you agree to our use of cookies.